


But I miss those days

by experiment



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Trashy Romance Novels, determined harry, look the first part is pretty depressing but it'll get better, tiny!harry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-03 18:03:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14001597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/experiment/pseuds/experiment
Summary: This time, Harry hasn’t faced a basilisk, a horde of dementors, the shade of the man who killed his parents. This time, Harry doesn’t know the Patronus, or accio, or the way that flesh feels as it burns away under his hands. This time, all Harry knows is Wingardium Leviosa, what a man looks like when he dies in a flash of green light in his dreams, and what he can figure out for himself.Or:The Triwizard Tournament in Harry’s first year at Hogwarts.Undergoing edits





	1. Breathing In

It starts, as it usually does, with a boy, a cupboard, and a scar. This time, months before Harry ever knows about magic, he sees old Frank silhouetted with green light. He wakes up gasping in his cupboard, and a spider falls into his mouth. 

Harry coughs, wide-eyed, because: he just saw a man die. There’s also the matter of the spider he just swallowed, so that possible adds to the disorientation. Harry is ten and a half years old. 

He has no explanation for what happened, unlike the Harry of fifth year. He doesn’t know who Voldemort is, what Avada Kedavra means: all he knows is that he just saw a man die. 

Harry goes through his morning subdued, and he tells himself it was just a dream. He makes breakfast absentmindedly, with the hot pan sizzling, the bacon turning from pink to brown. After a few weeks, that smell will make him nauseous as he recalls the smell of burnt flesh. But for now, he cooks the bacon and the eggs and plates them as the Dursleys gather in the kitchen. As he goes to place the bacon at the table, Harry sees Vernon’s green, green shirt. 

He numbly registers Petunia’s yells, but they don’t seem to pierce through the panicked haze that envelops his mind. His breathing quickens.  
Sharp shards dig into his feet as he walks back to his cupboard, and he doesn’t feel a thing. 

The rest of the day passes by him. Harry goes to school. He comes back from school. He walks into his cupboard. Harry feels as if a sheet of glazed glass is suspended between him and the rest of the world; he can see outside of the glass, but it’s distorted, warped, and it doesn’t really seem real enough to touch. 

Harry stares up at the ceiling of his cupboard, with the familiar webs and spiders, as he tries to will himself to sleep. The spider webs and the paint around him seem different from yesterday in a way that Harry can’t really place. He can’t tell if the disparity is real or imagined.

Harry tells himself as he goes asleep that it was just a dream, and it won’t happen again. It does. That night he dreams of Bertha Jorkins, and the Cruciatus, and what eyes look like when everything goes dull.

At first, he tries to stay awake. The dreams come anyway, and the next day he can't think because of his pounding headache and his twitching at green and red in his peripherals. Harry’s eyebags grow darker and deeper, day after day. 

He manages two days without sleep before one of his classmates yells right next to him during recess, and he has to retreat to a corner of the yard to calm his panicked breathing. 

Harry learns that he has to deal with it because his teachers and his classmates are beginning to ask questions, and the dreams are not going away. 

Harry doesn’t know what the green light is, what Crucio means or even if what he’s dreaming is a figment of his imagination. Here’s what Harry knows: green light means death, what eyes look like when they dull, what screams sound like after the red light hits. Here’s what Harry knows: what a man looks like when he dies. 

Harry has no idea what’s going on. He doesn’t know that magic is real, he doesn’t know his dreams are real, he doesn’t know who is always, always in his dreams. All he knows is this: he will give anything to make the dreams stop. 

And so, here we are: a boy, a cupboard, a scar.  



	2. Diagon Alley

It starts with a boy, a shack on the sea, a giant, and:  
Yer a wizard, Harry.  
But most of all:  
Yer parents were killed by you-know-who during the war. Hmm, his name? Ah, well… Voldemort. (Shudder) Don’t make me say that name again.   
Harry quiets, his eyes wide. Voldemort, he says in a whisper. Because that’s the name of the baby-man-monster-thing in his dreams.   
Voldemort, he says.   
Voldemort.

The glazed glass between him and all the rest cracks a bit. His dreams and his reality are starting to match, in small pieces, and that scares as much as relieves Harry. Because- it means his dreams might be real, it means that evil existed in this new, seemingly wonderous society, and that makes him nauseous.

But it means that he might have a chance to stop the dreams. 

Harry looks on, awed, as Hagrid pulls a birthday cake from his giant coat, and produces a small smile, hiding his tumultuous thoughts. Because- magic! cake! Wonder! And yet. The name Voldemort repeats continuously inside his head, and his attention is on that revelation, not the cake, no matter how chocolatey it tastes. 

Hagrid asks if everything’s alright as Harry gets a distant look on his face. Harry starts and replies with a tremulous smile. 

“Everything is just fine.”

Hagrid doesn’t push. Instead, he changes the subject and says that as the groundskeeper of Hogwarts, he was in charge of patrolling the Forbidden Forest- “and you’ll see, Harry, most of the creatures there aren’t dangerous- a whole herd of unicorns live there, y’know! I’ll show you once you get there, if you want.”

Harry falls asleep listening to Hagrid’s stories, selectively blocking out the sound of the Dursley’s argument upstairs. Hagrid trails to stop once he sees Harry fall asleep, and settles down for the night. 

When Harry goes to Gringotts with Hagrid, there is no mysterious stop at an underground Vault. Flamel keeps his stone, because the other two schools will be at Hogwarts, and no matter how much he wants confirmation that Voldemort is alive, Dumbledore will not cause an international incident. Harry gets introduced to his giant pile of money and asks Hagrid about the difference between stalactites and stalagmites, and nothing more. 

After that, they go to Madam Malkins, because Harry apparently needs to wear robes to be a proper wizard, which doesn’t really make sense to Harry, but he’s not going to complain if it gets him away from Dudley’s old cast-offs.

And that blond boy he meets at the robes shop, talking about how it’s such a shame that Quidditch is canceled this year, because he was going to try out, and what house do you think you’ll be in, anyway?- well. He looks like the blond man he sometimes sees in his dreams.   
Harry feels sick to his stomach, because:  
Proof.   
When the fitting is done, he calmly walks outside into a side alley away from view and violently throws up into a trash can. (they were real) (he doesn’t want it to be real). Harry covers the vomit with some moldy papers, wipes his mouth clean, and goes to meet Hagrid with a smile plastered on his face.

Harry meets Hedwig, and gets his wand, but: his wand is the brother of Voldemort’s. (Can he not make one move without a constant reminder of his dreams bobbing on his doorstep?) Ollivander says that Voldemort was terrible, yes, but great. Harry stares at him in horror. If the wandmaker, the one that provides the essential instruments for this society, calls Voldemort great.   
Well. 

Hagrid grins at him as Harry gets on the bus back to Privet Drive. “I’ll be seeing you at Hogwarts, then!”

Harry thinks about Voldemort, about that blond boy, about his dreams. Then he thinks of Hagrid’s tales, the feeling in him as he grasped his wand, and magic. As Harry boards the bus, he calls out, “I’ll look forward to it!” Because Harry is sick of being scared, and maybe this is his chance to change that. 

Hedwig hoots from her cage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as promised, another chapter.


	3. Trashy Romance Novels (or, trains and hats)

Unfortunately, Harry’s tendencies in attempting to be early backfire on him, this time. The bus journey that took him from Surrey to Kings Cross required him to make several transfers and he might have overcompensated a tad for the traffic and rush hour and whatnot. So Harry’s now, uh, a little bit too early for the train to Hogwarts. As in, about six hours too early. 

He sighs. Harry’s currently standing on one of the divides between two rails, and the constant overhead reminders of ‘mind the gap’ and announcements of the departure of the next train is getting to him. It’s only been about thirty minutes, and his jumpyness has already climbed to unacceptable levels. He swears that the next person to bump into him or ask about his parents is going to… is going to…. Well, he’ll think of something. 

Harry makes a strategic retreat into a nearby bookstore, one of those ones that are just there in a train station, right next to the cafes that exist to give travellers some of that life-infusing coffee boosts. In an attempt to make the lady at the desk not kick him out, he tries to look like he’s browsing the shelves. After about fifteen minutes of this, the lady looks like she’s about to ask him to leave. 

Dudley’s unfitting clothes are really not conductive to trust. Harry probably looks like he’s somehow going to pull out a knife and rob the store, or something. Maybe whip out a wand and send a green light at her. Harry resists the urge to giggle and wipe at his eyes, and decides the constant waiting, loud noises, and tension is getting to him. 

Harry picks two books off the shelves at random and takes them to checkout. He has about twenty pounds left on him from the bus ride, as he had changed some of his galleons into pounds when he said to Hagrid that he was going to ride the bus back. 

The lady doesn’t take her eyes off of him as she checks him out and asks for eight and fifty. It’s only when she looks down at the covers of the books as she hands them over that her eyebrow rises.  
Harry looks down.

He blushes and grabs the books, hurrying out of that shop as if the hounds of hell were on his heels. 

Both of the books are trashy romance novels. 

\------

Harry settles into his seat with a sigh. The disappearing wall was… pretty weird, he wants to say, but pretty cool too. In fact, except for his nightmares, that’s what all of the wizarding world has been like. Pretty weird, but pretty cool, until something reminds him that magic means that his parents died, and that his dreams are real, and not just figments of his imagination.

Harry kinda stops that line of thought there, because he does not want to think about them right now, and looks around for a distraction. Harry slowly looks directly up to the trunk he just managed to heave on the shelf. He sinks lower in his seat at the thought of trying to get it down without disturbing Hedwig, who somehow is already asleep. 

He looks at the two books he still has in his hands. 

Trashy romances they may be, but they’re still better than thinking about (how a man looks when he dies, how a green light spells out death, how screams can echo in his ears far after the screamer stops) his nightmares. 

Harry opens to the first page. 

xxxx

As the blond from Diagon Alley opens the compartment door, Harry looks up from his book. Harry freezes, and his breath quickens. He can see the boy’s lips moving, and the voice hits his ears, but it’s tinny and far away. Harry swallows down his nausea and gives a weak smile. He hasn’t heard a word the boy just spoke. 

The blonde looks at him disgustedly and huffs, before turning on his heel and closing the door with a bang. Harry jumps, a little bit, but he’s just glad the boy is gone. The nightmares were clawing at the edges of his vision. 

Harry makes another note in his mind to stay away from that kid, and tries to forget the way his heart is pounding in his ears, the way the words blur on the pages of his book. 

xxx

Harry walks up to the hat still holding one of the novels from the bookstore. They are, surprisingly, a very good distraction from everything. And, as a bonus, when he’s reading them, nobody seems to want to talk to him. They just give him creeped out looks. 

The hat plops onto his head, and everything goes dark.  
Well, well. What do we have here, then? Oh, ambitious, certainly, but…

Here’s the thing: Harry knows the absolute worst that a wizard can do, and he is so, so scared every moment the day. He has good reason to be.  
Here’s the thing: Harry goes to Hogwarts anyway.

The hat recalls a quote it heard, once, about fear and courage. 

GRYFFINDOR!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just. I just wanted Harry addicted to trashy romance novels, ok.


	4. Hats and Books

A moment of silence. Then claps and whoops echo off the walls of the hall, far louder than any before, and Harry flinches back and clutches his book tighter in his hand. The inside of the hat is dark, and all he can hear is the noise. 

Aw, calm down kid, it’s only the Gryffindor idiots. Just.

1,2,3,4, follow the numbers, and all that. 

3  
2  
1

Harry takes a deep breath, and pulls off the hat. Thanks, he whispers to it. 

The professor looks at him with concern when Harry hands the hat back. He avoids her gaze and stages a retreat away from the center of attention, down to the red and gold of the loudest table. Which maybe isn’t a retreat from the center of attention at all, when he thinks about it, but what else is he supposed to do? Harry absently notes, as he looks down to make sure that he’s still clutching his book because he seems to have lost the feeling in his hands, that his tie has turned red and gold. 

Maybe that’ll help him blend in or something, he thinks to himself. 

Like- a marking that makes him look like part of the loud crowd- which is still clapping and whistling, as far as he can tell, because the noise level has not seem to have fallen, but he’s trying not to think about that- a lion’s skin to hide his secret self behind, even. 

Harry notes that he is, in fact, still holding onto his book. Good.

Harry also notes, when he looks up, that the tie is really not helping him blend in, because there seem to be a lot of hands coming towards him. Presumably to pat him on the back, or something, but he freezes with wide eyes for a moment before automatically sliding out of the way and moving towards the back wall closest to the door as fast as possible. 

He doesn’t really hear the people saying congratulations, or asking him to sit with him. He takes a seat on the edge of the bench with its back to the wall, and opens his book. He still can’t feel his fingers, but that doesn’t matter, because Emily is about to investigate the suspicious Fitzwilliams. 

The rest of Gryffindor turns back to the sorting when the next child is called up. 

Harry’s breathing slows down to normal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hats and books can be helpful too, y'know

**Author's Note:**

> I accidentally copy-pasted my first draft of this instead of the third so. Changes!  
> I hope you enjoyed it! There will probably more of this posted tomorrow, and I'm going to try to update on weekends.


End file.
